Freedom of the Sky
by Kazzy
Summary: An X5 reflects on her life.
1. Default Chapter

**Title** –Freedom of the Sky  
**Author **– Kazzy  
**E-mail address** – kazzy@whoever.com  
**Rating** – PG  
**Category **– Vignette  
**Spoilers **– The Pilot   
**Summary **– One X5 reflects on her life

**Notes **– Takes place 10 years after the escape, before "Blah Blah Woof Woof". Very sorry if anything I write in here is wrong, this was written pre-"Reds", and I don't live in America, and I never have so I'm sort of winging some of it.

**Disclaimer:** Zack, Max, Jondy, Eva and Lydecker belong to James Cameron, Charles Eglee and Fox. Please don't sue, I'm just borrowing them for a while coz they're such wonderful characters and I have no hope of ever creating anything so wonderful as them. Roma, Aunt Kara, Susan, Lily and Brandon belong to me. To borrow please ask.

REWRITE 

**Very Important Notes** – 

The name has been changed from 'You Never Know' to 'Freedom of the Sky'.

OK, as I said above, I wrote this before I ever saw "Reds", which is a long time ago now. Recently, I decided to re-write it (as I have done and intend to do with a few of my other fics). So, yes, if by some trick of fate you do remember this, it has been here before, and there are several sites that still have the unaltered version of it. This was my first ever posted fic (all that time ago), so it's close to my heart. I'd appreciate any and all thoughts you people have on it.

Story next chapter.


	2. Freedom of the Sky

****

I still remember the escape – it's not an easy thing to forget. Max's seizure, Eva's death, Zack's orders, running through the snow, sorrow and fear when not everyone made it. After we left the rendezvous point I made it to the perimeter and over the fence. I ran until my super-sensitive ears alerted me of pursuit.

I stopped and climbed a tree. To this day I can't tell you why; I mean, we were always taught to keep moving in enemy territory. It would have been considered a tactical error had I still been at Manticore, one I probably would have been punished for; but at the same time it was what saved my life – had I kept running they would have caught me. I was spotted anyway.

I've grown since that night, tall and thin. Back then I was tiny, the smallest and youngest of X5. Tucked on a large bow of an evergreen I was only visible from directly underneath. People rarely look above their eye level; so the soldier who came by would never have seen me but an owl, perched on a nearby branch, hooted and he looked up, startled. He saw me – looked right into my eyes – there's no way he didn't see me.

I cannot begin to describe the terror I felt: _they were going to take me back! _But he raised a finger to his lips, very deliberately lowering his eyes. A few moments later when others joined him, he said that there was nothing there. I don't know why he did what he did, but if I could, I would thank him for it.

That was the last I saw of Manticore for eight years. I stayed in that tree nearly forty-eight hours before I felt safe enough to leave. I ended up in California; or rather I travelled in a straight line until I hit the ocean, unable go any further. The blue expanse of the sea was, like many things in this new and terrifying world, a strange, but oddly freeing experience. The water mirrored the sky, apparently extending on forever. Strangely, I never became agoraphobic, which could've been expected after the closed off life I had led. However, I loved the sea because it reminded me of the sky, and the sky had never had a perimeter fence.

Inevitably social services picked me up and dumped me in a foster home. Always one to roll with the punches I stayed there – more importantly they fed and clothed me and, not particularly worried about by mental well-being, no-one bothered to question my strange habits and mannerisms. However, after only a few months disaster struck North America and the chaos that the Pulse created chased me all the way to just outside Miles City, Montana, where I met a woman whose husband had died in the panic following the Pulse. I was so hungry I am ashamed to say that all it took was a meal. 'Aunt Kara' took me and two other children into her home, and she always treated us as if we were her own.

Brandon, Lily and I all had different backgrounds, different lives, all of us orphans, even if I still wonder if you could technically call me an orphan. Created in a lab, born to a surrogate mother who was only in it for the money. I am not even completely human. Throughout the years other children came and went, staying as long as they needed. Brandon, Lily and I were the permanent ones.

I grew my hair to cover my barcode and attended a school with other ordinary, yet fascinating, children. I excelled in all my classes; the discipline pounded into my head from birth and the natural intelligence bred into the X5s served me well. At first only instinct kept me from running too fast in races and hitting too hard in fights. Later, I turned hiding what I was into a skill. I made friends; but I was still faster, stronger, smarter, had better senses and was so very different from my peers. I trusted almost no one and all these factors combined kept me separate from those around me.

It was more than two years before I had my first seizure. Terrified, I hadn't expected them, but I knew what it was. Hadn't I seen them drag away others, my own siblings, because of them? Didn't Eva die in front of us, shot by Lydecker himself, in her desperate attempt to stop them taking our sister Max? Aunt Kara wanted to take me to a doctor when the tremors first wracked my body, but I wasn't so far gone that I couldn't make it adamantly clear that that was not to happen. Doctors, in my experience, poked and prodded you; they cut up the still warm, but dead bodies of your brothers and sisters. Besides, I knew what I was – what would the doctors make of me? Had Aunt Kara persisted I would have had to leave, so I am glad she did not.

Aunt Kara herself was a mystery. I knew almost as little about her as she knew about me.  We never seemed to have much money, yet we always had enough, and nothing was ever skimped on. She did not work in any way that I could see, and as far as I know she has no living relatives. She knew homeopathy, which is how we eventually worked out about the whole tryptophan thing. But then she knew a lot about a lot. She loved people, but was secretive and lived in the middle of nowhere. Her house was filled with books, music and movies – all pre-pulse – and because of the powerful generator we never went without power, even so far out as we were, even after the pulse. She taught me to love literature, to revel in music, to enjoy life. Her home was as different from Manticore as you could get and I loved it there.

She never asked about my past, any of our pasts, something for which I am eternally grateful for, I could not have stayed had she done so. Once or twice someone let slip some comment, on occasion even I mentioned something about one of my sibs, but we never really talked on it. It is to her credit that within those walls my barcode and 'abilities' were never mentioned. However, to say we never spoke of the past, it is say our own personal histories, because the house itself was an oasis of the past.

My seizures were the only blotch. After they started they gradually got worse, until I was fourteen or fifteen, when due to the frequency and severity of them I spent half of my freshman and sophomore years in bed. Which was where Aunt Kara put me every time I had a seizure so bad I could not hide it. Both Lily and Brandon collected my homework and assignments regularly for me. I think my teachers knew them better than they knew me. Both years I still passed with honours. By the time I reached my junior year, though, my seizures had lessened. I still cannot work this out, by my calculations they should have been the same or worse but they were better, it was just the way it was. I still get seizures and they are, from time to time, bad, but hey, I'm an X5, that's one of our flaws.

In senior year it finally happened. Early autumn. One of those clear days with an endless expanse of blue sky, reminding me of those first days looking out across the never-ending Pacific Ocean. The weather was still warm, the sun shining and there was only a slight breeze running through the grass and brushing past my bare arms. A last reminder of summer: a day to hold on to in winter, staying with you until spring.

A friend had dropped me off at the end of my road, nearly a mile's walk to the house. Aunt Kara had demanded that I come straight home after school because of a bad seizure I had had earlier in the week. I was wearing a pair of strappy sandals, which cut just a little, a short summer skirt and a sleeveless top. I walked slowly making the most of the sun, which I loved, but had been so denied as a child. My fingers had just absently lifted the latch to the gate when a motorcycle roared up beside me lifting dust and making me want to sneeze.

The rider was familiar, but I could not immediately put a name to the face. He didn't go to school, I knew everyone there, and that left me so few options, people travelled so rarely in those parts now that beyond the town I did not know many people. His cool grey eyes caught me though; in them I saw recognition, love and sorrow.

"Roma, Lydecker's coming." Then I knew who it was. Zack. My brother. I nodded and asked him to wait. He did so grudgingly, much like the brother I remembered, grunting a command at me to hurry – there wasn't much time. 

In my room I changed into a pair of faded blue jeans, a long sleeved, too-hot shirt, steel capped boots and a pair of sunglasses on the top of my head. I dumped my school clothes in the laundry hamper just like we'd always been nagged, but rarely remembered to do, or in my case deliberately forgot in order to fit in. In a bag I placed my leather jacket, which I had saved many months for (one of the few things Aunt Kara refused to buy me), the rest of my savings, my tryptophan, a battered photograph of Aunt Kara, Lily, Brandon and I, and a paperback. I still carry a book wherever I go, sort of like a charm. Zack tells me it's sentimental and that there is no such thing as luck. I asked him to explain then how it was I managed to escape Manticore all those years ago, when I should have been dragged back. He still hasn't given me an adequate response, so I maintain my belief in luck.

On my way down stairs Aunt Kara stopped me. She asked me where I was going.

"My brother's here. They're coming for me. I have to leave."

I remember the sadness in her eyes as she accepted this. She didn't fight me, or demand explanations, but the pain shone so clearly from her face, I couldn't deny that she loved me and would miss me. I shifted uncomfortably, aware of my waiting brother, when she asked me to wait; from the fireplace she removed a brick I did not even know was loose (I knew about the other two), and pulled out some money. A lot of money. She pressed a large sum of it into my limp hands as I looked up at her in surprise. I tried to refuse it, but she insisted, whispering, "Take it sweetheart, it's only a loan, I expect to be paid back in full. I love you, always remember this is your home."

Tears threatening to ruin my resolve I replied, tripping over the words, "Thank you. For everything. Tell everyone I love them and goodbye. Tell Brandon I'm sorry that I can't help him with his chemistry homework tonight." I kissed her on the cheek, turned, walked out the door, down the steps and over to where Zack was waiting, forcing myself not to run to hide at the back of my wardrobe. I glanced back imprinting the image of Aunt Kara standing on the stoop in my mind, swung my leg over the back of his bike, wrapped my arms around Zack's waist and held on as we sped off.

We passed Lily, Brandon and Susan, one of the children who was currently at Aunt Kara's. They'd probably stayed for one of the extra-curricular activities we all participated in. They stopped and stared; I turned my head and watched them standing in the dust kicked up by the tires until we rounded the corner. Then I rested my head against my brother's back and wept, not caring if knew or what he thought. My tears were for everything. My entire life. The one at Manticore. The one I had just left. The one I was about to start.

His bike sped down the roads for the rest of the afternoon and most of the night until nearly dawn, long after my tears had dries and I could feel a seizure on it way. "Zack." I called. I did not need to say anything else, he knew, whether because he could feel the tremors in my body or because, being Zack, he just knew. We stopped at the next motel we came across. While Zack got us a room I stayed with the bike barely holding myself upright. He helped me into a room, forced some tryptophan down me and put me to bed. I remember him holding me that night; his arm a solid line of strength at my back as he stroked my hair and spoke soft words of comfort. A tenderness he has never shown me since, but one I appreciated, and still do. I think that my brother's presence meant that the seizure was less severe than it could have been.

Once I had recovered he took me all the way to Miami and left me there, staring at the ocean, with his number in case I ever needed it. I did not stay there long but left a few days later for Boston and then Salem, Massachusetts. I seem to be attracted to places I've read about in history books, which is annoying because there is one or two in Montana I never got to see. However, occasionally I find my way to the beach and stare out at the waves, just remembering a place with an endless blue sky. I let Zack know I was moving, he told me quite curtly that, "This number is for emergencies only Roma, I told you that. This is not an emergency."

I replied, very sweetly, "I know Zack, but I didn't think you would want to lose me again – isn't eight years enough?" And I hung up. I have seen him several times since he found me those six months ago. He does not like my habit of visiting historical spots, it follows too much of a pattern, but I cannot help it. 

To me it does not matter how debilitated they have become since the Pulse, or how little remain, they still fascinate me. Thinking about people and how they lived all those years ago, what life was like before the Pulse – it is just the way I am. Besides it gives me a glimpse of a world I never really knew, a world where freedom could be taken for granted. Over winter I try to be places without snow. That's something I've never been keen on. The odd thing is I like trees. Oh well.

Of the others I have only seen Jondy. It was nice to see her after so long, even if it was only a few brief days, well worth the lecture I got from Zack. I am ready to head off somewhere again. I do not know where though. I wish I could go to Montana, to home, but it's not safe, Zack says and I agree, but I feel our motivations are different. I wish to protect both my families, he only has one; he doesn't need to care much for the home I left behind, the one I'll never forget, the people whose safety and freedom depends on never seeing me. 

Zack routinely stops me and sends me in a different direction while forbidding me to go to Seattle under any circumstances, because apparently Lydecker spends a bit of time there. I sense this is not the only reason, but if I press him, Zack becomes even more impossible than usual. However, his stubborn refusal makes me even more inclined to go the places he stops me from visiting, particularly Seattle, which is the only place he has outright named. I have to remind myself what curiosity killed. But the sky beckons and a few days wouldn't hurt, would they? Maybe I will go to Oregon and slip over the border to Seattle for a bit. The sky beckons its freedom. 

****

**A/N2:** If you're interested in the episode where Roma and Jondy meet, go and read "Hitchhiking" here: Side note: Hitchhiking hasn't been re-written.


End file.
